Too late to apologise?

In context of Kashmir, a British acknowledgement of culpability may be comforting but does nothing to aid resolution.

David Cameron’s recent visit to Pakistan sparked a controversy back home about whether Britain should be apologetic about its imperial history.

Answering a question raised by a Pakistani student about whether Britain could help end the row between Pakistan and India over Kashmir, the British prime minister said that it was not his place to intervene, adding, “I don’t want to try to insert Britain in some leading role where, as with so many of the world’s problems, we are responsible for the issue in the first place”.

The liberal press, perhaps in broad agreement with Cameron’s assertion, has not dwelt on the issue. But the UK’s right-wing media, including the Daily Telegraph, mainstay of the Tory votebank, and the tabloid Daily Mail, has been frothing at the mouth with righteous indignation.

The Daily Telegraph accused the prime minister of running down his own country “in order to ingratiate himself with his hosts”. Others in the same paper expounded upon the “huge good” that the British Empire had achieved, while a Daily Mail headline referred to Britain’s promised education aid to Pakistan as “The 650 million pound apology”.

It is likely that throughout his time in Pakistan, the British prime minister was conscious of making amends for his gaffe in India last year, when he accused Pakistan of “looking both ways over terrorism”. But if this comment was intended to be an ‘ingratiation’, it was quite a clever one, keeping Pakistanis happy with an admission of culpability while staying out of a dispute which, if a genuine solution were to be attempted, is likely to strain Britain’s relations with India. From all accounts, he received a warm response from the students, who may have felt a measure of vindication in extracting such an admission from the leader of a former colonial power.

Sweet as these little victories may be, do they serve any purpose 60-plus years after independence? The police, the civil bureaucracy, our judicial system and a host of laws are often dismissed as ‘vestiges of colonial rule’ meant to oppress and not serve the people. But surely there must be a ‘limitation period’, beyond which our failures must be our own and not attributable to the past?

In the context of Kashmir, a British acknowledgement of culpability may be comforting but does nothing to aid resolution. Western powers, including Britain, are not prepared to damage relations with India in pursuit of the Kashmir cause, and all of Pakistan’s efforts at forcing a solution through armed conflict, direct or indirect, have either backfired or come to nought. Bilateral talks, reportedly brought us close to a resolution in 2007, before the Musharraf regime began to unravel, and will be the only way forward in the conceivable future.

The same is true for most of the other ills that beset Pakistan and for which we are eager to blame the Americans, the Indians and, the ultimate cop-out —‘foreign elements’. This knee-jerk response has numbed us into such a state of irrationality that nonsensical statements, such as ‘Muslims cannot kill Muslims’, are regularly presented and accepted as fact.

But there is a broader question that David Cameron’s comment raised: Should present-day governments of former imperial powers acknowledge or even apologise for some of their country’s past actions? If so, how far back in time should they go? And does the rule only apply to the West or should there be mass apologies, including an apology by Pakistan for documented atrocities committed in former East Pakistan?

Where victims of past atrocities are alive, an apology and compensation are surely appropriate. Four Kenyans who claim to have been tortured by colonial authorities during the 1950s Mau Mau rebellion have recently filed a case against the British government. The latter says it transferred all its liabilities to the newly independent state and it remains to be seen whether the court will be convinced by this argument.

As far as Pakistan is concerned, David Cameron’s statement may have been welcome for its honesty but, at the risk of agreeing with Daily Telegraph commentators, it is time to move on.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 14^th, 2011.